


Dressed For Success

by misura



Category: Dragaera - Steven Brust
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-12
Updated: 2006-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Aliera contemplates the heights of fashion and the fashion of heights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dressed For Success

Aliera e'Kieron, Dragon Heir to the Empire and wielder of one of the Seventeen Great Weapons, scrutinized her reflection in the mirror, frowned, and decided that it really wasn't _fair_. Here she was, alive again after Daddy's little slip-up and Sethra's slightly larger one (no matter what Vlad might have to say about the subject, Dragons weren't _that_ keen on visiting the Paths of the Dead before it was their time and they'd seen at least a century or twenty).

She was the daughter of a _goddess_ , for crying out loud. The blonde hair looked nice enough, sure, and it would have served just fine to make everyone in the room sit up and notice her when she walked in - even if the room was as big as Castle Black's great hall. She didn't have any complaints about her eyes, either. Their changing colour according to her mood had made her feel a bit ... gaudy at first, like she was some cheap magical bauble one gave to babies to keep them occupied and quiet, but she'd only had to kill a couple of dozens of people before it was generally agreed upon that her eyes, colour-changing and all, were of an extraordinary beauty, and not 'gaudy' at all.

Her cousin was okay, she supposed. He did have a somewhat annoying habit of sticking his nose where it didn't belong - really, what business of his was it who she invited into her rooms? Just because he was too busy obsessing over magic and witchcraft to get a life, that didn't mean _she_ couldn't get one either! Besides, she'd seen the way he looked at Teldra sometimes. Like he'd take the head off anyone who'd dare to do so much as try to hold her hand.

All right, so her cousin was actually a loser who spent too much time studying and whose lovelife mainly consisted of wishing to hold his seneschal's hand, which he didn't dare to ask her for because he felt too insecure about himself. Aliera'd have thought that Blackwand would have boosted his confidence by at least a few inches, but apparently, Morrolan really had a lot to feel insecure about.

Still, Aliera felt she could comfortably blame Fate for that one. One couldn't choose one's family, after all, and after Daddy's small mistake and the Interregnum, there hadn't been all that many relatives left. Plus, to be fair, he _had_ helped Sethra to bring her back to the world of the living. His wine-cellar wasn't too bad either, although his concept of throwing a party was a little tame.

The Dragon Council had named her Heir, which was awfully nice of them, if also a little predictable, considering that there were at present more males than females on the Council. The females on the Council had, of course, voted in favor of proclaiming her Heir because _they_ knew she didn't want to become Empress, which went to prove once again that female intelligence was evenly matched by male stupidity. She'd be willing to bet Morrolan's honour that none of the male members on the Council wanted to become Emperor, but it didn't seem to have occured to them to apply the same logic that made them not want to be the Heir to her petition.

Aliera sighed and changed the colour of her dress. Fashion was all very well, but nobody ever seemed to consider that what looked good on someone with dark hair, looked downright awful on someone with hair the colour of 'spun sunlight', as one of her more poetically challenged admirers had called it.

Even fashion favoring the dark-haired masses of the Empire would have been tolerable though, if it hadn't been for that one injustice, that one thing that had determined her first steps on the long winding path of life and magic. It wasn't only unjust; it was illogical as well.

Daddy had been tall enough. Not tall, per se, but typical human. Normal. Verra was a goddess, so Aliera couldn't believe the problem could come from that side of the family. Gods couldn't be small.

So why was she so short?

The only advantage, as far as she could see, was that at least she didn't need to worry about getting the right shoes - practical enough to fight in, easy to clean and get blood out of, and, obviously, fashionable - because nobody was going to get to see them anyway.

(At least, not as long as long dresses were in, and short ones weren't, which had been the case for - oh, say from a week after Aliera's emergence from the Paths of the Dead, to the present. Familiarizing oneself with a Yendi who had good reasons to wish the colour of green to remain 'in vogue' had definitely proven to be a worthwhile spending of her time.)


End file.
